Once Upon a Time
by udderpd
Summary: Young Harry, it was going to be a one shot but it grew. Harry, Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Susan, Hannah, Daphne and the Patil Twins.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer;** The illustrious J. K. Rowling owns everything that resembles the people or places found in the Harry Potter books; everything else you can blame on me.

Unless of course I could blame someone else, Draco Malfoy would be good . . . but being as he would only be seven or eight in this time line, he would still be in diapers for the next two years, and as obnoxious as he is, it is hard to blame a rat faced little prig for anything if he is still in nappies.

**Authors Note;**

**Note 1** - I have recently read several stories by Radaslab; _(Thirty Minutes that Changed Everything; Thirty Minutes II, and Not Normal.)_ These are Great stories and they use time compression, the tales are on this site and they, as well as his other stuff, like_ (Breakfast in New York),_ is well worth reading.

This story also uses the concept of time compression, I seem to remember the idea from a long time ago, (maybe it was even a Science Fiction book) so I am not sure that I have stolen the idea from him, but I do thank him for the good reading, and reminding me of the notion. As a footnote to this; I am over seventy years old and I have been reading Science Fiction and Fantasy for well over fifty years; I cannot remember what was popular Si Fi in university back then; however I do remember Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, A. E. Van Vogt and John Wyndham from around that time.

**Once Upon a Time**

**By UdderPD**

_Once Upon a Time, not really that long ago, in a small town not very far from the big city; in quite a small unnaturally clean house there lived a rather nice young boy. Because of the aggrandising, self-promulgating, myopic and evil machinations of a wicked wizard he had been stolen from his rightful heritage and sentenced to be persecuted by a walrus, a juvenile hippopotamus, and a giraffe. _

_One day in early summer . . . _

**-x-**

_**And now the Story Begins . . . **_

There was a kind of explosive crack and Harry Potter disappeared.

Scant seconds later there were three much softer cracks as three people appeared in the totally wrecked room; two were Aurors . . . the third was the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Mme Amelia Bones. As luck would have it the three had been talking to Mafalda Hopkirk, in the Underage Use of Magic Office; this in itself was a very unusual occurrence.

For her part Mafalda was looking resigned, she had a standing instruction from Lord High and Mighty, Whiskers Dumbledore, as was usual with the bearded poof, it was only verbal. It was that he was to be informed of magic from this location before she did anything else; he normally took care of it. Well she hadn't done anything else, and Amelia Bones was her ultimate boss and Mafalda liked her job, so . . . she would leave it a couple of minutes and just wouldn't tell him about Amelia. After all it wasn't even her office which had sent Amelia with two aurors to number four Privet Drive; it was the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who was entirely responsible for that decision.

In the dining half of the kitchen dining room, two chronically obese males were lying; embedded in broken furnishings; very obviously unconscious . . . the younger one was so fat that it was almost impossible to assess his age; the other looked to be about forty.

Checking quickly Mme Bones said, "Their injuries are serious but not life threatening, so no healing, no repairing, look around for residual magic and take note of anything else that seems out of place or unusual."

There was also a third, unnaturally thin female, who was sitting on the floor; she was leaning against the wall at the end of the short hall . . . she was semiconscious and moaning piteously.

Amelia checked her quickly and finding no serious injuries revived her and gave her a glass of water with one drop of veritaserum in it; then she asked, "What happened?"

"The boy . . ."

"Which boy?"

"The Potter boy, he . . ."

"Harry Potter?"

Exasperated Petunia snapped, "Yes Harry Potter; he let the wind bang the back door when he was putting the third lot of rubbish out and it made Vernon and Dudley spill some of the coffee they were having after their breakfast. So as normal, they started to hit him . . . then suddenly everything seemed to explode and he disappeared . . . and you came . . . usually that awful Dumbledore fellow comes with the other really slimy, greasy haired Snape, when something like this happens."

Amelia continued questioning Harry's aunt . . . she didn't like what she was hearing.

At the mention of Dumbledore's name one of the aurors started keeping a discrete watch out of the front window and three minutes later she told the others that the chief warlock and Snape were coming up Privet Drive. Meanwhile, the second auror had been checking through what was left of the room . . . including the cupboard under the stairs; needless to say she was not the least amused.

None of the three were happy with what they had found out in number four Privet Drive.

It was a given that Amelia and her assistants had already decided that it would probably be for the best if the interfering old goat didn't find them here; so the three did a dispersion jump, before returning to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. The Headmaster was a very powerful wizard and a dispersion jump split them up; leaving at the same time, (one to Hogsmeade, one to Diagon Alley and one to St Mungo's;) before going to the DMLE made them almost impossible to follow.

**-x-**

It was a bright sunny Saturday morning in mid Devon and three very pretty young girls were sitting in a meadow which was liberally sprinkled with buttercups, clover and daisies.

Ginny was seven, it had been her birthday a few days before on the 21st of June; Luna was also seven and Hermione was eight; the three young witches were having a picnic by way of celebration.

Luna and Ginny had met Hermione about a year and a half ago when she had done some accidental magic saving Ginny who was crossing a road in front of a speeding car. Whilst thanking her Ginny asked her if she was a witch as well, the pair were only five years old and they had no real conception of the Ministry let alone its statute of secrecy; Hermione had been confused so the pair took her and her mother to meet Luna's mother. From this their friendship had blossomed and Hermione had spent time each day teaching the other two what she had learned in her muggle primary school.

Unexpectedly there was a loud crack and a scruffy, malnourished, small boy arrived on the ground at the fourth side of the tablecloth the three girls had spread out for their picnic. All three of them knew that they were young witches, so whilst they were surprised at the boy's arrival, they were not totally shocked and Luna, the blond, said, "He must be a wizard . . . although he is very young to be apparating."

Hermione, the girl with bushy brown hair, was sometimes a bit bossy, however she was very kind hearted and she moved over to have a closer look at their unexpected visitor. With a hitch in her voice she said, "He seems to be unconscious and it looks like someone has been beating him . . . quite badly; maybe it was accidental magic."

As she dashed off up the hill towards her home, Luna called out, "My mum used to work at St Mungo's hospital; I'll go and get her."

**-x-**

Dumbledore had a problem.

Well he was a pure-blooded, bigoted, egotistical, self-serving, interfering old busybody who accepted advice from no one, he kept unwarranted secrets and he kept poking his nose into places it did not belong. Consequently, much like others of his ilk, he had acquired a fair few problems that rightfully belonged to other people. However that was a different problem and like most of his problems, it was all of his own making. He was also quite clever, and no doubt he was cleverer than all of the people around him; but in the land of the blind the one eyed man was king; and he was nothing like as clever as he thought he was.

Nonetheless his current near calamity was that he had lost Harry Potter; whatever the young lad had done here appeared to be terminal; the child had destroyed both the protection wards which he had placed on this house and the illegal tracking charms he had put on the boy. At this moment in time he had no idea how he could possibly find Harry Potter; if he went to the DMLE for help they were very likely to find out that he had all but kidnapped the boy from Godric's Hollow and put him into an environment expressly prohibited by both of his parents Will's.

Because he was somewhat in a quandary as to what to do about the Potter boy, he decided to have a look at the apparently rather battered Dursleys.

He now had acquired another pair of problems, although these he considered rather minor.

Both of the Dursley males had multiple broken and shattered bones which required expert medical attention to reset, the degree of which was well beyond his or his accomplices healing capabilities. However the last time he had called Mme Pomfrey to Privet Drive she had threatened him with dire consequences if he called her here again. She ensured that he understood that she did not approve of the diabolical conditions these morons kept that poor lad in.

Petunia was recovering, so if he removed the families knowledge of magic and then repaired all of the damage inside the house the Dursley woman could call the muggle medical people for her husband and son . . . with a bit of luck they would eventually be alright. As far as he was concerned the Dursleys had served his their purpose and had now become of no importance to him; he would leave them to get on with their lives as best they could, after all, they were only muggles. As it happened the male Dursleys would be crippled for the rest of their lives.

I forgot to tell you earlier that he was also quite callous.

Although what he was going to do with Harry Potter, if and when he found him, portended another, rather major problem looming on the horizon.

**-x-**

She was sat thinking at the desk in her office; Amelia Bones had arrived back from Privet Drive somewhat confused; she was well aware that the Potters were an extremely wealthy Most Ancient and Most Noble family. Ergo she had been surprised to find that Harry Potter, the only Scion of House Potter, had apparently, been living in that hovel in Little Whinging . . . being inquisitive was a part of her job, so she went to the DMLE records department and took out their 'House Potter' file.

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement records were totally independent of the Wizengamot and other Ministry records. Very few people knew that they even existed . . . and even fewer had access to them.

Amongst a lot of other information, the file contained unsealed, certified magical copies of the Potters 'Wills'. The magical copies of 'Wills' were self-updating and these 'Wills' had never been read. In his arrogance Dumbledore had ordered the Wizengamot's copy of the Potters 'Wills' to be sealed . . . this order, could not affect the copies held in the DMLE records nor, come to that, those in Gringotts Bank.

From her initial quick scan of the two 'Wills' they were explosive, ten families were listed as approved to care for the scion of the Potter family; the Dursleys and Dumbledore were explicitly excluded. It was fairly obvious that Dumbledore was trying to commit line theft; Dumbledore had totally ignored the wishes of the head of an Ancient and Noble family and used his positions and influence to cover up his kidnaping of the scion of House Potter.

Next there was Sirius Black; he was Harry Potter's magical godfather, being the boy's magical godfather the magic wouldn't allow him to do anything that might hurt the boy, on penalty of his life or his 'magic'. The Wills were both quite clear that the Earl of Blackmore was not the Potters secret keeper; it was Peter Pettigrew who had been the Potters secret keeper . . . she would need to read the Sirius Black file, he was very likely innocent.

Some people were going to be in serious trouble.

Harry Potter should never have been anywhere near Surrey let alone Little Whinging; there was a list of ten families who were to be contacted with regard to the possibility of his needing to be looked after and her name was on the list. The final option, the eleventh, was an orphanage run by the 'Potter Trust'; the names of Dumbledore and the Dursleys were top of the list specified as being totally unsuitable for Harry's upbringing.

Now she was livid.

She had decided that when she found him, as soon as possible she would take Harry Potter along to Gringotts together with a copy of the Potters Wills; there was a very interesting option in both his mother's and his father's Will's for their son's pre magic school education. Even that long ago, neither of his parents had been particularly enamoured with Dumbledore, and if he was still at Hogwarts when it was time for Harry to go to magic school his parents were both recommending that he should go abroad for his magical education.

As she was pondering all of this she received a flustered floo call from her friend Mia Lovegood in Devon . . . apparently Harry Potter was unconscious in the Rookery . . . the Lovegood home.

She left for Devon immediately with her two trusty aurors; one of the aurors was bringing a field medical kit; when they arrived, the auror, whose name was Katy, went upstairs with Mia Lovegood, Luna's mother; she was going to examine Harry Potter.

The three little girls were sat cuddling on a sofa, so Amelia and the other auror, who was called Cleo, sat on another sofa opposite them and Amelia started chatting to them, after a couple of minutes she asked, "Can you tell us what happened?"

The three whispered to each other for a couple of seconds and then Hermione answered, "We were out in the meadow and had just sat down because our picnic was ready and there was a crack, it was quite loud, and . . . and he, the scruffy boy, just arrived at the empty side of the tablecloth. Luna said that he must be a wizard, because he appeared to have apparated, although, as she also said, he was way too young to be doing that. He hadn't moved much so I went and had a closer look at him and I said that he seemed to be unconscious and it looked as though someone had been beating him . . . quite badly." She had tears in her eyes.

Relatively brightly Luna added, "That's just what happened, apart from me running off to get my mum; do you want us to show you where we were having our picnic? It's still all out there . . . but I don't really feel like eating it now."

Amelia thought that it would be a good Idea so the five of them headed out across the meadow.

There really was not a lot to see and when all three of the little girls decided that they didn't feel like a picnic anymore, Cleo, the other auror, helped them pack everything away and carry it back to the house.

On their way across the meadow, Cleo whispered, "Higher Magic?" to her boss.

The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement didn't comment, she just shrugged her shoulders whilst looking thoughtful.

**-x-**

As the three children and two from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement arrived back in the house, they were informed that Harry had woken up . . . however he appeared to be very nervous of adults.

As the girls were making their way up the stairs, softly Hermione said, "If he really is nervous then we should try to be a bit quiet."

Walking up to the bed Luna said, "Hello, my name is Luna, and I live here."

With a big smile, Ginny continued, "My name is Ginny and I live about two miles in that direction." She was waving her hand around quite vaguely; in fact she was waving in virtually the opposite direction to the one in which she lived, and it was nowhere near two miles.

"Hello." Hermione said, "I live about three-quarters of a mile away, toward the village . . . what's your name?"

"Hi, my name is Harry;" he said quietly, "and you shouldn't talk to me because my uncle says that I am a freak and Dudley and his gang beats up everybody who tries to be friends with me."

Amelia had followed the girls up the stairs, she was listening from the doorway, and she said, "You don't need to worry about Dudley Harry; he is a long, long way away."

Hermione took his hand, she was nearly in tears when she asked, "Was someone hitting you Harry?"

He started telling his story and it went back as far as he could remember and he was soon in tears himself; the other two girls started holding his hands and comforting him. This gave him the will to tell his whole story of slavery, being locked in the cupboard under the stairs, ritual abuse, lack of food, lack of medical treatment for broken bones etc.

All seven females were in tears . . . there was only one crime for which the 'magical world' would prosecute a non-magical person, and that was the deliberate mistreatment of a known magical child. The Dursleys were likely to be setting some records for muggle families residing in Azkaban . . . hopefully, Snape and Dumbledore would be with them.

The three girls sat with him and started telling him about him being a wizard and them being 'really truly' witches . . .

**-x-**

Back in her office, amazingly, it was still only ten o'clock; Amelia Bones had a few minutes to think.

Firstly; the word about Dumbledore was out in her department. She couldn't think of any way the Lord of the very dark grey would be able to convince Magical Law Enforcement to mount a search for Harry Potter without revealing his complicity in at least half a dozen serious offences, and she already knew what most of them were.

Worryingly however, from his previous actions she was quite certain that the interfering Headmaster would put the word out to his cronies that he was looking for Harry Potter. In this context Molly Weasley was possibly a large problem; in some things she had a heart of gold, however she was a very opinionated woman and she thought that the whiskered old fool could do no wrong. Her daughter knew where Harry Potter was and any hint of him being at the Rookery and the information would be back to the scheming Headmaster immediately.

The second thing . . . was it Higher Magic? The three young girls; two would be classed as pure blood's and the other one was a muggleborn; absolutely no problem as far as Higher Magic or she was concerned; blood purists could rant all they wanted it wouldn't change fundamental facts. She had used the youngest ones infatuation with 'the boy who lived' as a buffer to protect Harry Potter from the meddlesome headmaster. Even Ginny knew that her mother, Molly Weasley, was a rabid Dumbledore supporter; convincing Ginny that if her family found out where Harry was she would more than likely not see him again for years; this virtually guaranteed the young girl would keep her mouth closed.

Sailing very close to the wind, the third thing she had done was to send two aurors to Azkaban to bring Sirius Black to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement pending his trial; she had read Black's file and it was almost nonsense. She had used his prisoner number as opposed to his name; hopefully this would keep her actions under the radar and out of the 'Daily Prophet' headlines until it was too late for certain hirsute individuals to interfere with what she was doing.

Lastly . . . she had to move her butt before she was late for her appointment with the head of Potter accounts in Gringotts Bank.

Amelia arrived at the bank with a copy of the complete Department of Magical Law Enforcement Potter file, both of the Potters 'Wills' and a copy of the Sirius Black file.

She was in time to keep her appointment with the head of Potter accounts.

An hour later she left Gringotts armed with enough Gringotts supplied information to sink both Dumbledore and Snape without trace; Monday morning's Wizengamot session would be a doozy. She also had a request from Ragnok that she should bring Lord Potter to the bank as soon as possible, he could bring whoever he wanted with him, and she had been given a Goblin portkey to facilitate this; she had promised to try to do this before lunch.

**-x-**

Ragnok was sat at his desk, trying to remember when he last had so many people in his office.

When Amelia Bones had arrived back at the Rookery she had been introduced to Emma Granger, who besides being a dentist, was Hermione's mother; without hesitation she had accompanied Mia and the four children back to the bank. These had joined the four goblin guards; the Potter account manager with his assistant and a trainee; two medical people and himself . . . it made quite a few.

Ringmail, the Potter accounts manager, asked the seven humans to sit on chairs in front of Ragnok's desk. Harry sat between Hermione and Ginny; Luna was between her and Mia, her mum; at the other end Emma was between Hermione and Mme Bones.

It hadn't taken long to arrange and the goblin leader was able to get the meeting started.

"By fortuitous happenstance Ringmail, the Potter accounts manager, was in a meeting with me, reference the aforementioned accounts, when he received an urgent request for an appointment from Mme Bones. The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement requesting a meeting with the Account Manager for the accounts of an Ancient and Noble House; is a very unusual occurrence. We were already discussing anomalies pertaining to the Potter accounts; ergo we were happy to invite Mme Bones to join us in the hope that she could throw some light on the situation.

"We spent some time reviewing all of the information available and have reached some not very pleasant conclusions. This has resulted in our issuing an order for the arrest of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and Severus Oscar Snape, as soon as they enter any goblin owned establishment. If we followed the laid down Ministry procedure, we should send a request asking them to hand the felons over to us; they would simply refuse and then the pair would be warned that the Goblins were going to arrest them. However if we issue a request for their extradition as they enter one of our properties, and an hour later, when we have them safely locked away, we will send a cancellation telling the Ministry that we already have them.

"I wish to assure all of you that we do not normally behave in this manner; however, attempting to deal with high ranking, powerful members of your government is a bit like having teeth pulled without a numbing potion . . . extremely unpleasant."

Emma Granger burst out laughing and apologising Mia Lovegood explained to the confused looking goblins that Emma was a muggle dentist and she found Ragnok's verbal expression very amusing; Emma then had to explain to most of those present what a dentist actually did.

Ragnok hadn't taken offence, and he seemed somewhat amused as he continued, "Because of the environment Mme Bones has described as Lord Potter's previous abode, I have brought in two world class healers and I suggest that we start by giving young Harry a thorough examination."

Harry looked questioningly at Hermione and she said, "I think that it is a very good idea Harry especially the way you said that those dreadful people treated you . . . I'm sure my mum will go with you, if you like."

Emma smiled at him as she took his hand and they followed the two healers into a small adjoining room.

As the door closed Ragnok said, "The magic for that room was invented by Harry's mother, it compresses time; the room is currently set for one thousand to one time compression; they will not be very long, if they activate it for one minute, in there the time experienced would be over sixteen hours."

The door had reopened as the goblin had finished speaking.

**-x-**

Clarice, the human one of the healers was chatting to Emma, and she explained that the room could be set up as almost anything you wanted; but that was only half of it. It could also run time compression, and it was currently set for one thousand to one; this meant that when activated ten seconds outside would be over two and a half hours in here. The major drawback was that once activated it had to be allowed to complete its cycle, set it for one hour external time and you would be in here over forty days and you better be sure that you had enough food and water with you; the healer turned back to her patient.

Emma was intrigued because only the healer who had been talking to her was human; the other was a goblin, her name turned out to be Rikki, her real goblin name was actually something totally unpronounceable, so she allowed humans to call her Rikki. Both of the healers used totally different methods of ascertaining Harry's physical status; and neither looked particularly happy with what they were finding.

The healers were talking to each other in gobbledegook they did however give an occasional synopsis in English, for Emma; the current injuries and the badly healed list included broken arms, legs, fingers, ribs and his skull . . . in two places. A loud blast of what must have been swearing erupted when they found that his magic had been bound . . . twice. One of the bindings he had blown apart a few hours earlier, and the other, that was still restricting at least half of his magic, had been severely strained at the same time; of course this was removed.

There were only muttered curses as they removed multiple memory modifications . . . Emma was warned that it could possibly take several days for all of his memories to sort themselves out and settle down.

It created problems for unscrupulous human magic users when Goblin or goblin trained healers dealt with the results of their nefarious machinations. It was normal practice for the Goblins to identify the caster of each of the spells used on Harry . . . it was totally Dumbledore and Snape who were the guilty parties.

**-x-**

Harry was brought out of the time compression room on a hovering stretcher, his eyes were open but slightly glazed and Emma was holding his hand, also he had been told by the goblin healer, to try not to move too much. This would give all of the physical healing time to settle and set properly.

The healers made their report to the occupants of the room and there was silence apart from the crying of the three girls.

Ragnok appeared to be livid, however he was the leader of the Goblin nation, so calling on all of his vast experience he pulled himself together and said, "The misbegotten pair of deviants will spend the next fifty years in our nickel mines, if they survive that they can spend the next fifty shovelling dragon fertiliser in the lowest levels; if they complete that stint I am sure we can think of something else to entertain them."

Amelia asked, "Why do you want to send them to the nickel mines first?" Her information placed the dragon pens three steps below Azkaban on the ladder of places you would wish to visit on your summer vacation.

Ragnok laughed, "Nickel ore shields and absorbs magic; if they are lucky they will still be squibs by the time they leave the mines, and whilst they are there they cannot be found . . . magically."

The goblin leader appeared to have settled a little, and continued, "Mr Potter, it is important that you are hidden, there are still a lot of people who, for various reasons, would like to get their hands on you; their reasons vary from wanting you to marry their daughter's to killing you. The first you are not ready to cope with yet; the latter is probably better put off for as long as possible.

"The healers have told us that you need to rest; there is a contingency in your parents Wills that would serve your requirements; do you feel up to listening to it?"

Harry nodded his agreement and his stretcher was rotated and tilted so that he could see Ragnok; Hermione and Ginny were each holding one of his hands.

As this was happening, the goblin healer interrupted, "His head is functioning but the background thoughts are currently quite chaotic. If you describe what you currently believe to be his best option, he could maybe take a copy of the wills and go there for a week, by which time, I am sure he will be feeling much better. Also he will need someone to take care of him, and people, of his own age, to keep him company; also he will need to return here in the next few days."

Ragnok was reading through some papers as he asked the healers, "How soon will Lord Potter be allowed to walk?"

After the pair scanned Harry again the goblin healer said, "He will need no more than another five minutes."

"Thank you." Ragnok said, he continued, "I have been reading through the specification of this house and quite honestly I have no idea what most of it means. Your mother was a brilliant muggle born witch and this house was built using a combination of magical and mundane systems and . . . Well quite frankly it is beyond me; a lot of these things your mother invented and she is deliberately vague with some of her descriptions . . . they are probably worth a lot of money.

"Right let me tell you what I can understand.

"The estate is somewhere in the tropics and it is always warm, but sometimes wet; bear in mind that the tropics go all around the circumference of the world. Singapore, Sothern India, Northern and central Africa, the Caribbean, central and Southern America . . . trying to guess precisely where at this time is somewhat pointless.

"It is known that the house sits in more than twenty five hundred acres of woodland, meadows and gardens; it has some thirty bedroom suites. It overlooks a private sheltered bay with four hundred metres of white sand beach complete with boathouse and jetty.

"There are rune driven wards which besides keeping unfriendly people out, exclude dangerous spiders, most biting insects including mosquitoes, snakes and dangerous fish. It has a library of some three hundred thousand volumes, over sixty thousand of which are on magical subjects; that makes it about three times the size of the total Hogwarts Library which is supposed to be the largest in the European magical world.

"At least two hundred free elves look after Y Crochendy . . ."

Emma burst out laughing again and Mia asked, "What is so funny?"

When Hermione's mum pulled herself together, she said, "I'm sorry about that, but Y Crochendy is Welsh for The Pottery and the last time I was home . . . Wales wasn't in the tropics." She was giggling again; her name before she married was Emma Jane Jenkins.

Amelia also seemed to be amused, "So, even if someone went to the trouble of finding out the name of the estate; first off it wouldn't be easy for them to find the translation of the name; and then, if and when they did get it translated the language would give them no idea as to which country the house is in."

Ragnok was smiling, "I think that it would be a good idea if at least some of us went to have a look at 'The Pottery', we might have more idea of what we are talking about?"

There was general agreement around the room, but then the discussion started as to just who would be going; the girls ignored the silly adult debate and each of them took a firm grip of Harry, it appeared that they had adopted him. He didn't mind them being that way but he was still confused about his being a wizard; he had been fed and people were looking after him . . . life was a hundred times better, so he would just go with the flow.

**-x-**

Local time it appeared to be early evening when they arrived at The Pottery, and eventually, apart from some of the Goblin guards, everybody had come to see Harry's, and if they had anything to do with it the three girls, new home. Gorgeous didn't begin to describe the whole place; even the goblins seemed to be impressed and they generally lived underground.

The furnishings all appeared to be high quality, comfortable, modern, muggle; Amelia wondered just what the Dowager Augusta Longbottom would make of them; she would likely be horrified.

Some elves had greeted them and after ascertaining who each of them was; one asked Harry if they would care to have dinner because it was approaching that time here. As soon as the elves had confirmed that they could cater for the goblins, it only took seconds for all of them to decide that they were getting rather hungry.

Very shortly after they had finished eating it became really obvious that Harry was wilting, he had had a very long, stressful day. What with the confrontation with his aunt, cousin and uncle early this morning, apparating over a hundred miles and four hours of compressed time it wasn't all that surprising.

An elf led him up the stairs and into the master bedroom; the bed was enormous but Harry was too tired to properly notice; the elf transfigured his clothes into pyjamas as he crawled to the centre of the bed and collapsed into sleep. His nightmares started almost immediately and not knowing what else to do, both Luna and Hermione climbed onto his bed and started to cuddle him, it was what their mum's did when they were having bad dreams. It worked . . . almost instantaneously; he started cuddling Luna who had backed into him whilst Hermione was behind him with her arms around him. Ginny was the smallest, so she took it upon herself to become his surrogate pillow; in less than a minute the three girls were asleep as well.

Both of the mothers had kissed all four of the children goodnight before following the rest of the adults who had trailed behind the children up to Harry's bedroom.

**-x-**

As she was entering a kind of lounge Emma spoke to an elf, the elf told her that her name was Tilly and then, having been asked, she showed her to where the telephone was located. Emma asked Tilly what she had to do to speak to her husband who was in England and the little elf explained to her that the telephone thought that it was in England, so she should just pretend that she was somewhere in England as well. Feeling only slightly confused Emma dialled her husband, she included the area code, he picked the phone up on the second ring, Emma outlined what had been happening, and she told him to expect her when he saw her and it could possibly be the next day. As she was walking back to the others she made a bet with herself that Dan, her husband, was already on the phone having a pizza delivered; she would have won her bet.

The account managers and the goblin guards had returned to the bank, and the others had just settled when Emma re-joined them; so Ragnok set the ball rolling, "This property is suggested in both of the Potters Wills, as being ideal for a preschool for magical children; they also suggests that any number between four and ten would likely work well."

Amelia said, "Harry is a given and it seems that we have already acquired another three, also I am certain that my niece Susan and her best friend Hannah would love to come here; however short term we have a slight problem with Ginny Weasley.

"Currently we could be accused of having kidnapped the girl, I very much doubt that the girl in question would see it that way, but her mother, Molly Weasley, might well, and she is about as staunch a Dumbledore supporter as you will find . . . anywhere."

"If we were to tell Mrs Weasley," Ragnok was smiling, "that Harry Potter and three girls, including her daughter, had been seen going into Gringotts . . . what do you think would happen?"

Mia opined, "Well Molly would tell Dumbledore, and he would collect Snape, then the pair of them would go, charging off to the Bank . . . and . . . and never be seen again.

"I think that it should be Amelia and I who go to ask Molly about Ginny staying here for school, she might well ask about teachers and such like. Knowing her she will want to come here and see for herself what it is like, and if she asks about Harry it would be better if Amelia answered her."

Not knowing the magical world, Emma asked, "How about other children; I believe that Ginny has brothers?"

Mia grimaced, "Ginny's brothers; the twins are a pair of almost uncontrollable hooligans and being as they are two years older than the others, they should be ruled out. Ronald is the same age group as the others, but he is very immature and is still at the 'all girls are icky' stage and I don't think he can read properly. Apart from that he is quite often very rude, so he and Luna can't stand each other, so all things considered, he is probably out as well; the other three brothers are older and are already at Hogwarts.

"Can we think of anyone else?"

Clearing his throat Ragnok said, "Our provisional list is quite short, it comprises Padma and Parvati Patil, they are of Indian extraction, their father is an unspeakable and their mother has masteries in Runes and Arithmancy. Neville Longbottom, the scion of House Longbottom, Amelia can probably tell you more about him than I can. Lastly Daphne Greengrass, her father is a magical solicitor and a member of the Wizengamot, her mother has a masters in History, and she also has a muggle degree in Political Science.

Although she didn't say it, Neville Longbottom's grandmother thought (quite erroneously) that he was a squib, and she wouldn't allow him to join them.

"That possibly gives us four more children and two teachers; there is a provision in the will for all of the teachers to be paid . . . very generously; there is a substantial provision in the 'Trust Fund', for this to happen. The goblins will provide medical cover as required also there is a suggestion that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black be included as instructors and friends. Seemingly Remus has several masteries and could easily teach Charms, Transfiguration and Defence to well beyond NEWT level. Sirius Black was an auror, also apparently he was always better than Snape at Potions, and he was an infinitely better teacher; out of interest, Lilly Evans, Harry's mother was the best at potions, in their year."

Amelia wasn't happy for a minute, "There is only one reason I can think of why Dumbledore has Snape anywhere near children, and even the thought of that makes me want to vomit; the sooner he is locked away the better.

"I have arranged for Sirius Black to be given a hearing before the Wizengamot on Monday; I will get him freed and here the same day or Tuesday at the latest; Remus Lupin is currently working for me on night patrols in Diagon Alley, he will also soon be here.

"There seems to be a shortage of males on our list, but the only way I can think of finding some more around the correct age, would be to ask Professor McGonagall, and at the moment, that is a definite no, no.

"We all seem to have things to do; Emma, the elves will look after everything here, but if you and your husband could cover the children for the weekend things might work a bit better.

"Mia and I have to go and see the Weasleys about Ginny; I also have to see the Patils, the Greengrass parents, the Abbotts, that shouldn't be too much trouble and then the Longbottom matriarch . . . oh such joy."

"Right," Ragnok said, "travelling between here and your homes in England. You will each be given a token which will allow you to travel to a secure floo inside the bank; the room only contains the portal to travel between here and there. The fireplace in the room will allow you to travel to your homes, for Emma we have opened a Gringotts Floo connection to the library in her house, I know that the ministry will not provide one for her because she is a muggle. I suggest that you take at least one of these ladies to your home with you and they can teach you how to use the system; you could bring your husband here for the weekend, if he isn't too busy.

"Don't forget that the wards here are rather unforgiving, and they will exclude anybody who intends harm to any of the residents; if the harm was targeted at Harry the exclusion would apparently be violent. I have heard reports of Mrs Weasley behaving in a manner that the wards here would not appreciate; for instance, if she tried to drag Ginevra away against her will she would find herself, unceremoniously transported back to Gringotts."

**-x-**

Harry had drifted into consciousness and tried to roll onto his back, he failed in his attempt but his action resulted in disturbing the slumber of the three girls who were surrounding him.

"What are we all doing here?" mumbled Hermione.

"I have absolutely no idea," Harry said, "although yesterday was possibly the weirdest day of my life, but it was very nice in its own twisted way."

In a horrified tone Ginny said, "I'm dead . . . if I go home and tell my mum that I spent the night in bed with Harry Potter and two other girls I will be painted as the mostest scarletest woman ever in the history of ever and longer if she has her way. She will probably kill me just for not going home last night."

Calmly Luna said, "I seem to remember that my mum was here last night so someone will certainly have gone to your house yesterday evening and told your mum and dad what's going on, I hope that someone comes and tells me soon as well, because I have absolutely no idea . . . anyway, where are we?"

All four of them sat up on the bed and stared out of the huge windows, they were facing out over a bay and the sea . . . the view was breath taking.

Holding hands after they had all clambered off of the bed and then went over to stare out of the window; minor variations on the theme of "Wow!" was the only thing said for the next five minutes.

A soft pop disturbed the on-going intellectual conversation, "Good morning master Harry and friends, my name is Penny . . . would you all like to come for some breakfast? It doesn't matter for today that you are all still in your pyjamas."

As they were Following Penny they were wondering where the pyjamas had come from; whilst making their way to a very nice, casual dining room, Penny informed them that it was called the breakfast room.

With foreboding in her tone, Ginny asked, "Um, just how many dining rooms are there?"

"There is the family dining room which is where you were last evening, it is a bit more formal than this, it will seat about a dozen over; and there is the formal dining room, which will seat thirty or forty over; and of course this room which can also seat about twenty or so. As the weather here is generally very nice the family sometimes eats in the conservatory or outside on the veranda, so you could be spoiled for choice. Oh I nearly forgot, there is also the banqueting hall, it will seat over a hundred."

Ginny was in a bit of a daze, however the food had arrived and all four of them were filling their plate's . . . the food was wonderful.

As they sat down Luna said, "One thing we don't have to worry about is how big or nice this place is, as long as we can live here comfortably that is all that matters." Luna had previously noticed Ginny's reaction to perceived wealth, Hermione's parents' house was very nice as well; even in the wizarding world Luna's home was considered weird. The young blond suspected that Ginny's reaction was something from her mother, what she had seen of the boys they were much the same; her father however didn't seem to care.

After the four of them had eaten they set out to start explore the house, they had spent about an hour wandering around before they were intercepted by Penny, who it seemed had been keeping an eye on them, "You should all go and have a shower, and then get dressed before other people come, then you can carry on exploring; I have put clothes in each of your room's, I will show you."

Going back up the stairs the three girls were muttering to each other about not having brought any clothes with them, whilst Harry assured the three of them that he didn't have any clothes to bring anyway.

Penny explained to them, "We know that none of you brought clothes with you so we made you some . . . and the underwear we bought because homemade underwear is usually not very comfortable."

Luna was pouting, "I don't mind having a shower but I would sooner not wear any clothes . . . after all, it is quite warm here."

Both of the girls were well aware of Luna's clothing preferences, but looking glum Ginny mumbled, "If she can manage it I expect that my mum will try to come here sometime today, and if she was to find us all with no clothes on . . . well you both know what she is like."

When they reached the top of the first flight of stairs the three girls ignored the direction the elf was trying to lead them and followed Harry into his room, whereupon all four of them started looking around properly.

"Wow, Look what I have found." The other three followed Luna's voice into the room she had been looking in; it was an enormous bathroom and she was stood in the middle of a huge, glass fronted, shower which had a huge window, overlooking the bay, at the rear; it was at least ten maybe twelve foot square. The others joined her and they all started looking around, they were chatting to each other and trying to work out how it worked.

"What does this do? . . . Aieeeee!" . . . Ginny had turned the handle she had been looking at; her shriek was joined by both Hermione's and Luna's, and she continued, "Well at least the water isn't freezing."

"We're already soaking; we might as well have a shower here." Luna said this as she was already pealing out of her clothes.

"But . . ." Harry was very articulate.

"We might just as well; although we will have to get dressed before the adults come." Hermione was taking off her wet things and Ginny didn't need very much encouragement to do the same.

Looking somewhat resigned Harry removed his wet pyjamas and joined in with the three girls, washing each other; however they did each wash their own naughty bits.

Eventually Ginny did the honours and turned the water off; she was immediately popped away by an elf, she was rapidly followed by Hermione, and Luna's "Oh poo," died in the distance as she disappeared as well.

An elf led him out of the shower, she identified herself as Miffi, and whilst she was drying him she explained that his father had named her that because he said that she was always miffed with him because when he got into trouble she always caught him.

Harry was only wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, but when he saw himself in a mirror he thought that he looked like a normal boy; his clothes and trainers were better than he was used to. They fit him, and he had new spectacles that weren't scratched and falling apart; his vision was improved considerably.

Harry left his room at the same time as Hermione left hers and they had only just greeted each other when they were joined by the other two; all four were in jeans and T-shirt's. As was fitting the ones that the girls were wearing were a lot more colourful than those Harry had on.

As they turned towards the stairs a voice came from slightly above them, "Good morning you lot, and did you all sleep well?" Coming down the stairs from the second floor were Hermione's parents.

There was a chorus of good mornings and yes we did, but rolling her eyes Hermione asked, "Is it still morning? We have been up for hours and none of us has a watch so we don't know what the time is."

Harry had just been introduced to Dan, Hermione's Dad, when Miffi, Harry's elf, appeared holding a tray with at least a couple of dozen watches on it; she encouraged each of the children to take one which they did.

The children were giggling whilst they were picking themselves watches; so quietly Dan said to Emma, "I know that you told me that he had a lot of money but most of those watches are over a thousand pounds each."

Smirking whilst she was admiring her new watch Hermione said, "You are very lucky . . . it is only quarter to twelve so I suppose that good morning was just about right and I guess that brunch is in order."

Harry wasn't yet up for any more formality, so he asked, "Miffi, can we eat in the breakfast room again?" Having agreed Miffi popped away.

It was probably over three hours since they had eaten so the four of them decided that they could have a reckoning with some more food, after all the food was very nice and it would be a pity to let it go to waste.

The six had been eating and talking for about a quarter of an hour when there was a commotion from the direction of the Portal and people were following one of the elves into the breakfast room.

The occupants of the breakfast room all stood and tentatively Harry said, "Good morning."

There were five girls who none of them knew; Clarice, the healer from Gringotts, Amelia Bones and Mia Lovegood, he knew from the day before; along with another three woman and a man none of the others knew either.

Clarice said authoritatively, "Introductions first please Amelia and then I can check over Harry and return to the bank."

All of the new arrivals noticed that the Director of Magical Law Enforcement didn't take any offence and she named all of the original occupants of the room. She then did the reverse introducing Anna Abbott and her daughter Hannah with my niece Susan Bones; Pinkie Patil is the mother of Padma and Parvati, as if you couldn't guess they are twins; Eleanor Greengrass is Daphne's mother and Remus Lupin was one of Harry's parent's friends, to the rest of the room.

Clarice and Harry had started leaving the room but Remus stopped them and said, "Harry, I know that your parents recommended that I be given a job here, however there is something that they both knew and I believe that it is only right that you should all know as well . . . I am a werewolf."

Harry looked at him and said, "I know virtually nothing of this world I was sort of dropped into it yesterday, however, my parents didn't seem to have any problem with this, so I don't see why it should particularly concern me . . . welcome to my house." Harry then shook his hand.

As he was turning to leave with Clarice when she said, "Mr Lupin, for as long as you work here Gringotts will supply you with the latest version of the Wolvesbane potion." and she went upstairs with Harry.

As the talking broke out between the adults the three resident girls noticed the attention of the five new girls was divided between themselves, the marvellous view over the bay and the food. The three dragged the five over to the buffet and all eight were soon at the far end of the table chatting, all were giggling and some of them were even eating.

When the pair came back down the adults were congregated around the near end of the table; some of them were eating, others were just nibbling; everyone asked how he was and they were told that he was doing fine.

Emma smiled at him and said, "We were going to talk about setting up the school."

Harry looked at Clarice and said, "I know that you work for Gringotts, but I would think that this is more of a job for one of those account manager people? . . . I seem to have acquired three of them."

Clarice gave him a huge smile and promised that she would get at least one of them to come, and then she reminded all of them that Harry would have to go to Gringotts medical facility the next day. It was about his scar, there was some strange magic associated with it; it might be a bit boring for them but his young friends could come with him if they wanted to.

Harry walked her to the Portal.

When he returned he asked how much the senior teachers in a magic school were paid; when the discussion settled down they had settled on twenty Galleons a day for when they were teaching; Remus' salary would be settled separately.

Smirking he said, "Right, that's my part done for now, so I am going to explore my house; if the new girls are staying, they haven't even seen their bedroom's yet." Behind him there was a rushed exodus of the younger females accompanied by various squeals.

**-x-**

After the children left the breakfast room Mme Bones was looking slightly confused, "What has happened to him? He is completely different to the boy I met yesterday."

Mia answered her, "I read the healers report from Gringotts; when we were told in Ragnok's office, what she said that they removed 'multiple memory modifications'. What she didn't elaborate on was that three of them were designed to interfere with his intelligence and reasoning ability. So what we are seeing is what Dumbledore has been trying to destroy, or maybe just subdue; but for what purpose . . . does anyone have any idea?"

Shrugging, Amelia said, "For me it has been like a toboggan ride down a very steep hill.

"Yesterday, quite by chance, I was with two of my people talking to Mafalda Hopkirk when her equipment detected a huge blast of uncontrolled magic from where Harry was living. We apparated there immediately and found a scene of mass destruction; apparently his uncle and cousin had been hitting him and he had blasted the pair of them through a load of furniture and into the walls. Bear in mind that this pair of troglodytes weighed at least twenty five stone each _(160kg or 350lbs)_; and there was also a woman, his aunt, she was a more normal size although a bit on the thin side, she was thirty feet away and she was all but unconscious from having hit a wall probably quite hard.

"I started quizzing her, but when we saw Dumbledore coming the three of us immediately went back to the Ministry and I started going through the Potter files; I found their Wills. It seems that they have never been read, the regular Ministry, Wizengamot copies were sealed on the orders of his hairiness, the self-proclaimed leader of the very dark grey, Dumbledore; although I don't think that that is what he calls it. From reading quickly through them, the Wills that is, I thought that it was very likely that Lord Sirius Black was an innocent and thrown into Azkaban without a trial. So next I dragged his file out as well; if the whole thing wasn't so serious it would be a joke . . . the committal notes in the file were utter nonsense.

"About this time Mia floo called me and I went to Devon, whilst we were walking back from the scene of Harry's arrival one of my aurors mentioned 'Higher Magic'. . . I will be honest . . . 'Higher Magic' is something I have never knowingly come across before. No doubt if asked, the idiot Dumbledore would have an opinion on it that suited him and we lower mortals would be far too plebeian to understand what he is talking about so just give him whatsoever he asks for . . . probably Harry first . . . does anyone else have any ideas?"

Pinkie Patil opined, "In the British magical world there seems to be a dearth of information on any subject that requires an IQ in three figures to understand, and if it is magic which the underpowered inbred pureblood morons can't do it, they will call it Dark Magic and then they can ban it.

"Has it never occurred to any of them that real dark wizards will find and learn really dark magic because they simply ignore all of the rules and do what they want?

"Sorry, I went off on a bit of a rant there.

"Higher Magic by its very nature is not very well understood . . . anywhere; however it does seem to have some vague rules; one appears to be that it is always for the Greater Good of the magical world. Not Dumbledore's mindless blathering, not just humans even, but the betterment of all creatures, people and races of good will. The only other thing I can remember at the moment is that it never seems to last very long; usually it has finished its work before anyone realises that it is happening.

"Let's talk about what we know of this situation. Harry was being badly beaten by his relations and he blasted them into the walls to stop them; at the same time he blew through anti portkey and anti Apparation wards that had been set by one of the most powerful wizards we know of. He, Harry that is, destroyed one of the two bindings on his magic and he severely damaged the other, bear in mind that these had been applied by Dumbledolt. Finally he landed about one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles away at the empty side of a picnic tablecloth, with three very friendly, light sided girls who are near enough his own age; they were sat at the other three sides. The majority of witches and wizards can't apparate that far let alone everything else he did.

"Was this 'Higher Magic' . . . ? It could well be . . . if it isn't I don't know what it is other than the most extraordinary series of coincidences I have ever heard of. I believe that there is quite often a prophecy involved, I will ask Ashok, my husband, about that; however it does offer a solution to the boy who lived conundrum. The death curse will not work if the target is considerably more powerful than the caster, and Harry's magic is obviously very, very, powerful; the backlash would have destroyed Voldemort."

Eleanor Greengrass said, "I think we are all aware that this should be kept very quiet; so let's talk about this school, what subjects are going to be covered?"

"The Potters 'Wills' give us an idea of the way James and Lilly were thinking." Remus was scanning through a list in front of him. "There are actually two lists the first one is almost compulsory; the second is more like 'if feasible'.

"I better start off by telling you that Hogwarts does not teach a lot of this stuff . . ."

**-x-**

Once outside the breakfast room they slowed to a giggling walk, Harry stopped before going up the stairs and called, "Miffi," his elf arrived with a pop.

"Do you require help, Harry?" The elf was looking suspiciously at all of the still giggling children.

"We were thinking that the girls who might decide to come and stay here hadn't seen where their rooms will be or what they would be like, and then I wondered if there was anything they should see before we went upstairs to show them the rooms?"

"First let's go this way then, Jiffs can show you all, the library." At the mention of a library several of the girls started bouncing up and down.

The elf had headed off towards the back of the house and opened a large pair of double doors; the children followed her through the doors . . . and stopped . . . gaping in amazement.

Over three hundred thousand is an awful lot of books to have in one room, and the library was unlike any other they had even heard about, there were books from floor to ceiling stretching off into the distance; and the room appeared to be about thirty, or more, feet high. What was unique to their eyes was that they had arrive in the middle of one of the end walls; the middle being defined as some ten to fifteen foot above the floor with the ceiling about the same distance above them; they were on a balcony.

Another elf greeted them, "Good morning Master Harry and friends, my name is Jiffs and I am the head Liberian; how might I help you all."

Hermione was pouting, "I like browsing the shelves looking for something to read . . . I can't do that here!" a few of the girls were nodding agreeing with her.

Jiffs smiled at them, "There are over sixty three thousand books about magic, and mainly they are in four languages; the rest, over two hundred and fifty thousand, are mainly in English and they cover just about everything. In each of your rooms is a study area and it has bookshelves, when you are in that room you can ask for a specific book or books on a particular subject; the books you ask for will be placed in your bookcases. These books will all be magical copies and they will last until they are returned to the library, provided they remain under the wards.

"Many of the reference works currently in Hogwarts library, for various reasons, are not here; all of the history books they have are totally false and were written by purebloods, to boost the ego of the self-same purebloods. We have more accurate histories here. Hogwarts vision of muggles is about one hundred and fifty to two hundred years out of date; their astronomy is pre the Luna landings and their transport still talks about horse less carriages, and there is no mention of aeroplanes even.

"I don't think that I need to go on."

Sulkily Padma asked, "Is it impossible to browse the shelves?"

Miffi said, "I will show you all how the bookshelves in your rooms work; but until you learn how to fly a magic carpet, you will not be able to brows the shelves in here; although I will see what I can do."

"Come along, we still have a lot to see." Miffi dragged them away; the group were led through, what appeared to them to be a fairly large classroom, when they came out they passed some stairs which were going up, the elf informed them that if and when they found some teachers, they would be living up there. Next they came to a potions lab, it had fifteen work stations, and at this point Miffi told them that the adults appeared to be happy with their current numbers; although they seemed to think that a couple more boys wouldn't go amiss; Parvati was the only one who seemed to vaguely agree about this. The next room was for practical magic or duelling, the room was also large enough for them to learn to fly, certainly Magic Carpets and maybe broom's as well and on into a room with a computer on each of the dozen or so desks; Miffi told them that when they became reasonably proficient operating a computer a new one would be put into each of their rooms.

The children had stopped, and Daphne said, "We are only seven or eight years old, that all seemed to be a bit much . . . we might want to play."

Harry said, "We will play; I think that most of this lot is for the future."

Parvati agreed, "I think that Harry is right; what we were asked was 'did we want to go to a play school where we would learn a lot of things;' that is certainly what I wanted to do, but there was play and school in the question, so they are in my answer as well."

Hermione added her two penny worth, "We have a computer at home and I sometimes play games on it, but I don't think that you lot have seen the beach yet, I think that we could have some really good games down there."

Susan giggled, "Well we were told that we would be going shopping in muggle shops and that they have loads more clothes and toys and things than there are in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade."

"Can we all read properly?" Hannah asked.

Looking down Harry said, "My aunt and uncle wouldn't let me read hardly anything, I can read but I wasn't allowed to practice much; I don't think that my cousin could read properly and they didn't want me showing him up."

Hugging him Ginny said, "Well it was much the same in our house, I am not sure if Ron can read at all, and the twins were quite likely to set a book on fire if they were around and I tried to read it . . . it is not always good having six older brothers."

She is not joking," Luna said, "most of the time her house is like a war zone, with her mother screaming her head off on top of all of the other noise."

Smiling Padma said, "Well, with all of the books in that library I am sure that we can all find something we will enjoy reading; if not we will invade a book shop or six, when we go muggle shopping. I heard my dad telling my mum that there were muggle bookshops that sold ten times as many more books than you can find in Diagon Alley."

The group moved on and having left the area more than one of them had christened the school they were led to what Hermione immediately christened a cinema; there were over four hundred Video films under stasis and these could be added to as other film titles were identified. Harry had visions of hundreds of girlie films making their way into the collection.

Hermione told them, "Besides book shops ordinary people also have shops that sell loads of films about all sorts of things; a lot of them are stories but there are a lot of them that are educational as well."

"I don't know about you lot but I think that we should show these others their rooms and then try to find our way down to the beach." From the reaction it appeared that Luna wasn't the only one who was getting fed up with what they were currently doing.

Harry spied the stairs up to the bedrooms in the distance and they all headed off to the left to go up to the bedrooms . . . it took Miffi a few second to realise that the children were not following her so she turned around and followed them.

**-x-**

Whilst heading for the main staircase Harry espied the adults and went to see how they were getting on; they had conjured a huge blackboard which seemed to have the seven days of the week divided up into three lessons in the morning and three lessons in the afternoon. He climbed on to a chair and sat on the table facing the blackboard to get a better look; at least pretending to have more decorum, the girls turned their chairs to face the board and sat on them.

Miffi came in and said, "Master Harry! What do you think that you are doing, get off of the table and sit on that chair properly."

As Harry was getting down and turning his chair around to sit down, Remus said, "Hello Miffi, how are you?"

The obviously surprised elf looked at Remus and smiling said, "I am very well thank you Mr Remus but this one is nearly as much trouble as his father used to be; so how are you?"

Remus winked at Harry and said, "All things considered I am doing very well, I will be staying here for a while and Sirius should be coming to stay in a few days as well."

"I hope the pair of you have grown up, if you haven't I will be thinking about asking for clothes, I am getting too old for all of the shenanigans you two used to get up to."

The smiling elf left and Daphne asked, "What's all of this then?"

None of the children were slow and they all had a pretty good idea what was on the blackboard.

Eleanor, Daphne's mother, said, "It is the schedule of lessons for the school."

There were several complaints of the 'You must be joking,' variety and Harry asked, "Can someone conjure another board without the lessons filled in please."

None of the children were watching so they didn't know who had provided the board, but both Hermione and Harry said "Thank you."

He turned to Hermione and asked, "Did you say that you read that to do magic without a wand, you just concentrate on what you want to achieve, point your hand at where you want to do it and push your magic at it and then it should happen?"

"I think that that was just about exactly what it said." Hermione agreed.

"What about all of that stuff it said before that?" Ginny asked.

Luna answered, "When Hermione and I read through that lot again . . . carefully . . . we decided all of it was a load of rubbish; the author had put it in there because he wouldn't get much money for a book with only about half a dozen lines in it."

"Right girls," Harry asked, "do we want Sundays off to go muggle shopping?"

"Harry hold on a minute," Hermione interrupted, "a lot of muggle shops are closed on Sundays, but they are all open on Saturdays so maybe that would be a better day for shopping."

Parvati smiled, she had been looking closely at the schedule the adults had made for them, "Any day sounds great for shopping, and we need some time for the beach and swimming."

Harry pointed his hand at the board and slowly moved it from left to right, all of the time slots, before nine in the morning, were filled in with solid red. "How does that look?" He had eradicated the first lesson of the day.

"What's that for?" Susan asked.

He blushed, "Well I thought that if we were to get up at seven," there were several girlish grumbles, "and went down to the beach for a swim and things," this seemed to appease the grumblers, "and then when we came back up we could have a shower and breakfast; then we could have lessons. What do you all think?"

Susan said, "I would really like more time down on the beach."

"Think Sue," Hannah said, "We could always go back down there after lessons, if we wanted to."

It was a smirking Daphne who said, "I think that we should all go up and look at the bedrooms, because we newer girls still haven't seen them yet. And I don't think that these grown up type people have thought that nine o'clock in the morning here is only half past five in England. I am fairly certain that not many of them are going to want to get up at four to be ready to teach class at nine here." She stood and they all followed her out of the room . . . none of them tried to hide the giggling that erupted as they went through the door.

**To be continued.**

**Note 2** – If you are all good boys and girls, you will have the other half of this before Christmas.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer;** The illustrious J. K. Rowling owns everything that resembles the people or places found in the Harry Potter books; everything else you can blame on me.

I was thinking that if I was putting out blame, maybe I should give Dumbledore his fair share, he really does deserve it.

**Authors Note 1 –** This story was written and completed prior to my posting the first half of the story.

**Authors Note 2 –** I thank all of those who reviewed the first half of the tale.

**Once Upon a Time**

**By UdderPD**

**Part 2**

Yesterday had been quite a bad day, he had lost Harry Potter and he had panicked; panicking was not good it did not achieve anything but Severus had helped calm him down . . . he was such a nice boy.

He had had an inspired thought . . . after breakfast he would go and see Molly Weasley . . . today was Sunday and tomorrow was the Wizengamot; he needed to get this Harry Potter mess sorted out today . . . and it was just as well nobody knew what he was really up to.

Molly was plugged into the wives gossip network and there might be a rumour about Potter out there . . . of course he would take Severus with him.

When the dastardly duo arrived at the Burrow Molly Weasley was cooking; she had six strapping young boys and when she was at home she always seemed to be cooking.

When he had asked her if she had heard anything about the boy, she had quite happily told him that her Ginny had gone off with Harry and several other girls on some educational thing. Ginny had been very excited; Molly had also told him that it had all been arranged through the goblins at Gringotts; apparently the Potter educational trust was funding it. Hearing this news he had initially been in something of a hurry to get away; however when Molly offered him some of her homemade apple tart to go with his tea . . . how was he supposed to resist it . . . today was behaving itself much better than yesterday.

About an hour later the pair were making their way down Diagon Alley when they were met by one of Dumbledore's least savoury associates; namely one Mundungus Fletcher. The not so petty thief informed the Headmaster that, he had heard that, the pair of them had been declared persona non grata by the goblins; and if they entered any goblin owned establishment arrest would be in their immediate future.

He wanted to rant; he wanted to scream; he wanted to lie on the floor and stamp his feet having a tantrum; today had been going so well . . . all he could do was to go back to his office and have a good sulk.

**-x-**

At the top of the stairs Hermione asked, "I didn't notice them before, but were all of those there this morning?" She was looking at the bookshelves, full of books; they were against the previously blank walls opposite the bedroom doors.

It appeared to be the same in both directions so they went to the right; they all spent some time perusing the titles and they came to the conclusion that there was a comprehensive selection of children's fiction. There were also educational books covering both the magical and non-magical worlds; in the main these were basic introductions to subjects such as history, mathematics and the social systems; both current and historical.

Hermione had been very much involved in choosing the fittings for their library at home; with judicious mental arithmetic she figured that there were between fifteen hundred and two thousand books here. Her smile grew when Padma and Daphne returned from the other side of the stairs, to tell her that the books on the other side of the stairs appeared to be different, and there were just as many shelves.

Miffi arrived and said, "I see that you have already found the browsing shelves, Jiffs decided to put these there for you all; if one of you take's a book off the shelf it will immediately be replaced by another copy of the same book; the books are automatically conjured. I shouldn't think that you would know that conjured things don't normally last, especially books; but as long as these are kept under the wards here they will keep indefinitely; however move them outside the wards and they will disappear. The wards cover the house, the veranda and as far out as the beach; they were extended to the beach because Mistress Lilly, Harry's mother, liked reading whilst she was down there." Hermione could imagine her mother doing pretty much the same.

The whole party had been listening to what Miffi had been explaining to them, and the little elf continued, "Now you came up here to look at the rooms." Pointing she said, "That is Miss Hermione's room and as you can see there are another three spare rooms this side; there are another two spare rooms on the other side, after Miss Luna's and Miss Ginny's room's. The inside of all of the rooms are the same and you can have whatever colour decorations you would prefer, even the wood can be changed, it is very easy for us to change these things so if you get fed up with the colours we can change them again." The elf concluded by saying that she would leave them to look around on their own, and she left.

In an effort to curtail the dithering, Hermione said, "I think that this should be Daphne's room." Whilst walking into the room next to hers. "This is just like mine." She continued, whilst looking around as she walked over to the windows.

The new girls were silent as they looked out at the beautiful view, Luna said, "As you can see the view will be the same from all of the rooms; really truly I don't think that it will make much difference which end you four decide to have as your rooms."

Daphne had turned around and was looking at what was to be her room, "This room is huge . . . where do all of these doors lead?"

"No idea," Ginny said, "but there is one way to find out." She opened the door nearest the window on the right hand side.

It was Daphne's bathroom, "Keep Ginny away from the shower." Luna said.

The response of, "Why," came from at least three girls.

Luna and Hermione explained, in detail, exactly what had happened, earlier in the day, in Harry's shower.

All of the girls were laughing and quite seriously Luna said, "I don't really like wearing clothes, especially when it is warm, and apparently it is always warm here; but I do realise that some of the grownups might start complaining if I started walking around the house with no clothes on."

"Well Luna, you know that Ginny and I don't mind being naked, but the others might need to think about it for a bit."

"I love clothes." Parvati said, "But as to not wearing them when it is unnecessary, I think that I would be o k with that if everyone else was the same way." There were general murmurings of agreement with Parvati's opinion.

Coming out of the opulent bathroom they turned away from the window; there was a three foot space between the headboard of the bed and the wall, so they didn't need to walk around the bed to get to what proved to be the dressing room. It was also enormous, but much to Daphne's surprise there were clothes similar to those being worn by the original three girls; she immediately stripped down to her knickers and put the new Jeans and a T shirt on. All of the girls were pleased to see that Harry had carried on normally and he hadn't taken any particular notice of what Daphne was doing.

Crossing the room, past a couple of very comfortable looking sofas and four equally comfortable looking armchairs they came to the only door on this wall; it lead to a library study.

The library section was at the end nearest the door, the shelves which were filled mainly contained reference books, general and specialised encyclopaedias, and translation dictionaries for numerous languages. About one third of the shelf space was empty and in the middle of it was a single stark white shelf which was embossed with the message, 'ANY BOOK OR BOOKS PLACED ON HERE WILL BE RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY'; it was rather obvious what the shelf was for.

In the middle of the room there were two large desks, both were facing the wall on either side of the room; the one on the right had a very old looking computer, the one on the left was clear, obviously for writing and things. Both desks had comfortable looking high back chairs and there were several other chairs, with castors, spread around the room, also there was a shelf with a very old looking dot matrix printer, _not that any of them knew what it was,_ above the right hand desk.

At the far end of the room was an area which was obviously for sitting and reading, there were two very comfortable looking armchairs, each with its accompanying coffee table.

It was very obviously a working study as opposed to one in which to conduct business.

"Assuming," Hannah said, "all of our rooms are the same . . . why do we each need a room like this?"

Believing that the five new girls lives had been somewhat similar to Luna and Ginny's, Hermione quickly answered her, "At the moment we probably don't; my mum and dad run their own dental practice, and all of their business is done from their office in town, but they have a study a bit like this in the house, just to keep track of things. I shouldn't think we will need a room like this for a few years but when we start doing school type work outside of lessons this kind of room will be great.

"Also there is enough room, and chairs, in here for us all to work on something together; if we wanted too.

"Anyway if we get some newer computers there are some great games we can play on them."

Harry tried to help Hermione, "My cousin Dudley had a computer, and he was always trying to shoot something, blow something up or solve some puzzle on his."

"That sounds like a boy thing." Parvati said with a certain amount of derision.

"I assure you that there are some great games for girls." Hermione said.

The next hour and a half was spent deciding who was going to have which of the pairs of rooms; Padma was in the room next to Daphne with her twin sister Parvati in the last room on that side; Susan had the room next to Luna and her friend Hannah was next to her.

Remarkably there had been no arguments; Harry however was confused, all of the rooms were the same . . . what had taken them so long to make their mind's up.

Finally they had all converged on Harry's room for a good look at it, although it was larger, it proved to be very much the same as all of the girl's room's.

However, in his bathroom he found a ten position click stop knob. It was labelled, room one, room two, room three, room four, room six, room seven, room eight, and room nine; the other two positions were identified School and Beach. Without hesitation, Luna set it to beach, pushed the button in the centre of the knob, the mirror had shimmered, so she walked through it; she was quickly followed by all of the others.

**-x-**

The nine of them had exited a portal door onto the veranda of the boathouse . . . they were on the beach.

Quickly checking that there was a control knob to get them back to the bedroom, Luna Ginny and Hermione immediately shed all of their clothes and charged into the water, they were soon followed by Harry and the other six girls.

Hermione had had swimming lessons at school and Ginny had learned to swim in the pond at the Burrow, the others didn't let a little thing like that bother them . . . they just started a splash war.

The battle for control of the universe had been going for half an hour when Parvati said, "Susan, why your skin is turning pink?"

The war stopped and Hermione explained that it was the sun burning her, and they should all go back to Harry's shower.

When they reached the veranda, the jumbled pile of clothing they had left in their rush to get into the water had gone, hung in their place were nine bathrobes each with a folded towel.

Luna said, "It was nice of the elves to pick up our things for us," as she went back through the portal to Harry's bathroom; agreeing with her the rest of them followed her to Harry's shower.

When they thought about it later they considered themselves lucky that none of the adults had seen the nine of them cavorting around in the sea without a stich of clothing between them, it would probably have caused an argument . . . but at the time they didn't care.

Several conversations were subsequently held on the subject of clothing . . . or the lack of it . . . the consensus they reached was that whilst it was just them they would prefer not to wear any. It was also agreed that they didn't want other people seeing them naked . . . for now it would be kept as a private thing between the group of friends.

**-x-**

It was Monday morning and for a change Dumbledore was reasonably happy; he had transported himself from Hogwarts to the Ministry without incident, and entered the Wizengamot chamber his normal one hour before the session was due to start.

When the time came he delivered his opening address, and as he droned on most members seemed to be falling asleep; he asked the routine questions finishing with, "Prior to our commencing with our scheduled agenda, does anybody have any urgent matter to bring before the Wizengamot?"

This was another routine question and he was not expecting a reply.

However the Director of Magical Law Enforcement stood up, and made it clear that she had such business.

She told the assembly of her Saturday starting with Mafalda Hopkirk; then, in detail, what she learned at Privet Drive; of returning to her office and her anger when reading the Potters 'Wills'; her immediately suspecting the legality of The Earl of Blackmore's incarceration; receiving a floo call and going to Devon where she found Harry Potter; returning to her office and then going to see the Goblins; subsequently, at their request, returning to Devon to collect Harry Potter; taking him and several unnamed others back once again to the Goblins; she gave details of Harry Potter's medical checks whilst in Gringotts along with Dumbledore and Snape's transgressions uncovered by the Goblins; Dumbledore subsequently being banned from Gringotts along with the sequestering of all of his assets; and finally being totally convinced that Sirius Black was completely innocent and had been illegally thrown into Azkaban because, she believed, it suited some devious scheme of Dumbledore's.

She finished by saying, "I do not intend to question the Chief Warlock at this time, I have never received a straight answer from him before and I would expect exactly the same if I asked him anything this morning, however I will assure the chamber that my Department will be watching him as will I."

The chamber was completely silent.

The DMLE Director hadn't spared the Chief Warlock or his lackey, Death Eater Snape. Dumbledore had tried, several times, to silence her, but he had been closed down by the Minister of Magic. The third time the Minister was forced to do this; it was accompanied with a threat to expel Dumbledore from the chamber for the duration of the session. The Headmaster knew that there was nothing of particular importance coming up in this morning's regular session, but Amelia was up to something and he would prefer to be here to see what she was up to.

Prior to starting her delivery, Amelia had had one of her aurors place a comfortable chair at the front of the chamber, facing the Wizengamot members at her signal Lord Black was brought in and he sat, quietly, on the chair.

Amelia was still stood, she said, "This is not the long overdue trial of Lord Black, it is an interview in order that the Wizengamot might understand what transpired that fateful Halloween and determine if indeed he has any case to answer. I have not heard most of it, but I have asked him to tell his story of what happened, between his going to Godric's Hollow, and when he was thrown into Azkaban; he has volunteered to take veritaserum afterwards and answer any questions I might have. He has requested that only I will ask him questions for information or clarification; as he said, 'There are obviously some people who have their own agendas and he doesn't know who all of them are.'

"I have to agree with him."

The Earl of Blackmore's story took slightly over three hours to tell, it took another two hours for the list of questionable items to be compiled, and for Amelia to ask Sirius whilst he was under the truth drug.

Lord Black was released into the care of Remus Lupin; major compensation was to be paid for his illegal incarceration in Azkaban.

As soon as he could, Dumbledore hurriedly closed the Wizengamot session and fled back to Hogwarts; needless to say, all of the world's press crucified him.

**-x-**

"Where's Ginny?" Ron Weasley was sat at breakfast in the Burrow.

"I told you that she has gone to a play school." Molly Weasley, his mother answered.

"Why can't we go to?" one of the twins asked. Their mother couldn't tell them apart without looking carefully.

"You're too old; they are only seven and eight years old." Their mother told them.

"I'm eight, why can't I go?" Ron whinged, belligerently.

"I was asked, so I had to tell them that you still couldn't read . . . have you learned yet?" Molly had a dig at her laziest child.

"Play schools should teach kids to read." Ron complained.

"All nine of the children can read, so they don't have lessons to teach reading; they are already going to have lessons for six hours a day and Luna's mother said that you don't get on with Luna, is that true?" Molly queried.

"Loony Lovegood is nuts . . . all girls are nuts." Ron said pugnaciously.

"Well that settles it then . . . eight of the nine are girls." His mother was not happy as Ron and the twins stomped out of the kitchen to the broom shed; she wished that her youngest boy would at least try to learn to read, but he was going flying.

**-x-**

The majority of pure blood witches and wizards were quite happy to live in the closed off society that was the wizarding world. It did however have one often neglected major drawback, and it had nothing to do with the muggles. When something really sensational happened, it tended to stay at the top of the pub / housewife gossip list until it was replaced by some other juicy morsel; unlike the muggles, wizards didn't have television producing an endless stream of drivel to distract them.

Albus Dumbledore was not a happy bunny.

He had not been anything that resembled happy for about three years . . . since Harry Potter had disappeared and his nightmare Monday in the Wizengamot.

Mundungus Fletcher had approached him and Severus in Diagon Alley on the prior Saturday and told them that, for some reason, the pair was 'persona non grata' in Gringotts. Foolishly, it now appears, Severus didn't believe Fletcher and went back to the Alley and into the bank . . . he had never been seen or mentioned again . . . needless to say Dumbledore was very reticent about asking the Goblins about his friend. The last confirmed sighting of Fletcher had been two days after this incident . . . probably not so coincidentally, the rogue had also been going into Gringotts Bank at the time.

The Headmaster had since made enquiries with the Bank pertaining to other matters, he had used a Hogwarts post owl, he was well aware that some of the things he had done weren't exactly within the law as it currently stood . . . or, for that matter as it ever had been.

The first reply he received from the Goblins had been something of a disaster for him.

His vaults had been confiscated, all items that didn't belong to the Dumbledore family had been returned to their rightful owners; this included several Goblin artefacts for which they had been searching; he had been fined for withholding them. Everything else was to be sold to aid with the making of reparations to those, known to the Goblins that he had wronged. It was obvious that the Goblins knew at least some of his misdeeds; gleefully, it seemed, they assured him that the Director of Magical Law Enforcement also knew what they knew. And then, just to rub it in, various other people in the magical world also knew; including some, not too friendly, members of the Wizengamot; these were Wizengamot members who were not too friendly towards him.

Next they very politely informed him that, as his salary was removed from the school vault, they would continue to make reparations with it; he should be clear of his debt in a little over fifty eight years . . . unless they found anything else to add to his account.

Unusually, for goblins, they had offered him some free advice, it was that he should leave Briton and find a job in some third world country where his employers would pay him in cash; deep inside he knew that it was sound advice, but in his arrogance he was too obstinate to take it. As far as he was concerned other people's advice was just that . . . advice for other people.

The day after he had received his most unwelcome letter from Gringotts Bank; he received another one, it was no more welcome, from the International Confederation of Wizards. The Goblins had made a submission to them reference his actions and he was, as of yesterday, no longer the Chief Mugwump of the ICW. He had been replaced by of all things a woman, she was from Butan, wherever that was; what did any 'non-English pureblood' know about being fair and impartial.

The removal of Dumbledore as a buffer between them and the British Ministry of Magic had resulted in the ICW initiating an audit of all of its sponsored services. The most immediately visible effect of this had been the binning of Hogwarts current examination papers, and the introduction of their International Standard OWL and NEWT examination papers; at least they had had a year to make up the educational shortfall.

This had caused outrage amongst the pure blood bigots; apart from Britain and parts of Europe; it was recognised, everywhere else, that pureblood inbreeding was detrimental to the production of powerful magical offspring; this sacrilege was reflected in the I.C.W. examination papers.

He could no longer show his face anywhere in public; in order that he might undertake his duties in the Wizengamot, he had to portkey between his office in the school and the one allocated to the Chief Warlock in the Ministry.

He had only been able to come up with one reason he was still Chief Warlock, it was obviously because he was so outstanding at the job, nobody could be found to replace him. Not being encumbered by needless humility, he would never work out that Amelia had persuaded the Minister to keep him in the job; because after his disastrous Monday he would be far easier to control than any other likely applicant for the position.

**-x-**

Whilst Dumbledore was having his black Monday in the Wizengamot, Harry Potter was in the time compression room at Gringotts with the two Gringotts healers, six Goblin dark arts experts, two unspeakables and of course his eight girls.

Dealing with the soul fragment in Harry's forehead had only taken about an hour and then he and his girls had returned to his house and the beach.

The piece of soul from Harry's scar had subsequently taken four hours to analyse, and what they had found they considered to be very good news indeed. Because Voldemort had split his soul so many times making Horcruxes, Harry's piece of soul had simply broken off when he had cast the killing curse so many times close together at Godric's Hollow; it had nowhere else to go, so it lodged itself in Harry's forehead.

The really good news was that from it they could link up with the soul fragment in each Horcrux and whilst linked, they could destroy it; there was no need for anyone to find the pieces in the physical world.

When the final Horcrux was destroyed they felt Voldemort depart this plane of existence, and their piece of soul died at the same time.

The Goblins would only tell Mme Bones in the wizarding world, she needed to know; they placed no restriction on who the unspeakables could tell, members of the Department of Mysteries were notoriously close mouthed.

Mr Patil, the twin's father, ensured that everyone at the Pottery, who could be trusted, knew what had transpired; this really had only excluded Ginny's parents; the children had all been told, but they were only eight so they were not interested in such things.

**-x-**

It had taken almost two weeks for things to settle down in Harry Potter's hideaway, most of this time the children had spent playing on the beach.

Claris, the healer who worked for the Goblins had given them a lot of sun screen lotion, also she taught them sun shielding charms they could cast on each other.

Dan, Hermione's Dad, had shown Sirius a magazine with pictures of Quad Bikes and Beach Buggies; it took two days but now all of them were like lunatics charging around the beach; according to most of the adults, far too quickly.

Although, nobody was really that sure, if Sirius could be classed as an adult.

Emma was complaining about the noise from the bikes disturbing her sunbathing and she said, "At least they will run out of fuel soon."

Sirius grimaced, "Didn't I tell you that I put an ever-fill charm on their fuel tanks; they won't ever run out of fuel."

She wasn't slow, Emma asked, "Would one of those work on our cars?"

Remus replied, "Up until a few days ago it would have been illegal but as you know we registered the school with the ICW and Hermione is enrolled as a student so it is ok for you to know about magic; so I guess we can do that for you. However, before you take one of the modified cars for servicing we would need to remove the charm; and of course we will put it back when you get the car back.

Whilst Remus was dealing with Emma, Sirius was trying to convince nine trainee hooligans that their quad bikes were too noisy, so he cast a silencing spell on Hannah's. She had driven it no more than twenty yards before she decided that hated it silenced, and much to all of the adults' surprise, she wandlessly removed the spell.

Harry asked, "What was that word Hermione?"

"Attenuate, Harry."

She started her bike and Harry pointed his hand at it and it gradually quietened until it was only about a quarter as loud; as far as they were concerned it was a workable solution so he did all of the other bikes. Emma would much prefer the bikes to be completely silent but that wasn't going to happen; when she moaned that it was still too loud and Harry cheekily suggested that he could attenuate her ears if she wanted him to; Remus was not amused.

**-x-**

In their more detailed explorations of the house they had determined that what they had first thought of as the school, wasn't really their school at all; the school was through a portal and it could use time compression.

All of the children had found the time compression fascinating; the compression range ran from ten to one to ten thousand to one, the normal time duration ran from one minute to twenty four hours.

By the time Hermione, Padma and Daphne had figured it out they had become very cautious, if you switched it on for twenty four hours at one thousand to one, you would be in there for over two and a half years. One hour at a thousand to one was forty one days almost six weeks; at the maximum setting, ten thousand days is over twenty seven years; it did provide some relief that the school was totally self-sufficient and had a full complement of House Elves.

It would be years (years for them being the time they were actually living, not as it passed in the outside world) before they could begin working on a project they had devised for themselves. What they had decided was that it would be very useful if they could alter the duration of their stay from inside the system; even to be able to simply cancel the compression would be very useful.

The school was on the same estate as the house although it was ten miles up the coast; it turned out that the Potter's owned the land for twenty five miles to the North and twenty miles to the South. It was all along the coast and an average of twenty five miles inland, making the whole estate roughly eleven hundred and twenty five square miles (seven hundred and twenty thousand acres).

The main task for Remus and Sirius had been collecting together groups of tutors; they would leave the real world for two days and spend a year under time compression; the Potter Trust would pay them for their year and everyone seemed happy.

Two days under time compression and twenty six days to assimilate what they had learned meant that the children had thirteen years learning per year; by the time they would normally be due to go to Hogwarts they would have about forty years of education, if they could stand it. The first ten rotations and alternated magical and mundane learning, the theory being that they would be less lightly to become bored doing this . . . it seemed to work well enough.

Their time between time compressed years was spent either shopping or on the beach; it took some of the adults a while to come to grips with the fact that they were recovering from a year of intense studying.

Being as they were now well into NEWT's (magical) and 'A' levels (mundane) a third rotation had been introduced; this covered an introduction to subjects that were not normally found in either mundane or magical schools; mainly technomancy.

Gradually it all seemed to merge into one, and by the end of their second year their tutors were coming from the Research and Development departments of various Potter owned companies around the world.

**-x-**

It had been about two and a half years since all of that mess had died down somewhat and now it was all very likely to start back up again, and most probably it would be worse. In six months Harry Potter was due to come to Hogwarts and with him still as its Headmaster that was about as likely as the Goblins having a two for the price of one sale on Galleons.

He would have to try to arrange something to coerce persuade the young Potter to come to Hogwarts.

Speaking to his deputy, he had very casually mentioned attracting Harry Potter to Hogwarts, and she bluntly told him that if he tried one of his twisted solutions to the problem it would quite possibly be the last thing he ever did.

Surely she had to be mistaken.

Minerva McGonagall had not become Deputy Head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry because she was either slow or stupid.

When Dumbledore had tried to be oh so subtle whilst enquiring about Harry Potter, she had realised immediately what was in the back of the old coots mind, and she had done her best to warn him off. She most probably knew Dumbledore better than anyone else on the planet, and she realised that the old fool had not been the least bit deterred by her blatant warning against his interfering in Harry Potter's life.

Again.

The austere witch had no intention of being caught in any resulting crossfire, generated by the Headmaster's machinations.

As she dealt with the school accounts she regularly went to the Bank; ergo, at her next regular visit to the Goblin run institution she asked to see whoever it was that was in charge of the Potter accounts.

She had been most surprised to be shown in to see Ragnok, the Goblin leader; Dumbledore was in even more trouble than she had first thought; however, she had had no hesitation in telling the Goblins all she knew or suspected of Dumbledore's scheming.

Forewarned was forearmed and she had planted herself firmly in the clear.

**-x-**

Whilst the higher echelons of the British magical community had been staggering along, attempting to ignore Dumbledores screw ups, along with the rest of the world's opinion. Harry Potter and his friends had been receiving a very thorough and comprehensive magical and non-magical education. If they wanted them, all of the nine currently had, or shortly could have, significant positions within the British magical community, and it was important that they understood what that meant, also what was involved.

Sirius Black was Harry's godfather, so as per custom and his parents wills Sirius was Harry's magical guardian, this had been achieved despite Dumbledore's objections. It was also after the Chief Warlock had been reminded, several times, that as the scion of an Ancient and Noble House, Lord Potter did not require a non-magical guardian.

It had been very lucky for Dumbledore that the majority of the Wizengamot members thought that the Headmaster was upset to be losing the Potter and the Black voting proxies; it was quite significant, at least twenty eight votes gone from his control.

It had taken six weeks for Sirius to regain about ninety per cent of his previous fitness level; as the vast majority of this time was spent with him being in time compression; it was actually achieved in less than two days.

One of the things that the children found surprising was that to rise to their inherited position they needed educational qualifications; it semi explained the headmaster's constant attempts to devalue the OWL's and NEWT's from Hogwarts.

None of the nine were stupid and they all knew that their knowledge of magical society had started as virtually non-existent, and living in the pottery didn't do anything to increase it.

Although it was important this wasn't what Sirius was talking about; the girls needed five OWLS to be considered, any time, before their twenty first birthday; Harry needed those as well as three NEWT's for his majority, however this could occur when he was twelve. Needless to say, the girls were originally incensed, however by the time they had had six months of occasional lessons on the subject they all understood how the system was designed to work; this was a long way from saying that any of them approved of the system.

It had taken a year before they had gone to the Headquarters of the ICW in Basle _(Switzerland)_ to take, and pass their OWLS; six years could be added to this because of their time spent under time compression. However they each did have ten passes with at least five O's; at the same time they had been taking muggle school subjects and they took and passed twelve G.C.E. 'O' level subjects at a school in Truro _(Cornwall)_.

By the end of the next year, with their now regular periods spent in time compression, they each had at least five NEWT's at O; all nine of them were much better educated than any students leaving Hogwarts. There was a whole raft of subjects in the ICW prospectus which were not taught at Hogwarts; both the Ministry and the Wizengamot had tried to ban their teaching in Britain. However the ICW threatened to withdraw its approval from Hogwarts and offer all of the students all of the schooling they wanted at one of their approved schools in Switzerland.

It is remarkable how quickly agreements can be reached when the proper incentives are applied; there was no requirement to actually teach any of these subjects, even though they could not be declared illegal. At the same time the ICW commenced an audit of all of the spells and magic on the British list of Dark Magic and a whole raft of spells were released from this restriction. In conjunction with this several groups of spells were added to the lists; these were mainly the spells used by the pureblood elitist families to ensure a male heir and those used to abort a female foetus. Surprisingly the dissention was not too great; until, having heard the whispering, the ICW installed their own detection equipment and operatives to police these rules; it was all the Ministry could do to avoid a riot.

**-x-**

Dumbledore had had enough; he used his portkey from Hogwarts to the Ministry his nominal one hour before the session was due to start, today he was going to take control of Harry Potter. At his behest, the Ministry had sent a summons to Lord Potter telling him that he had to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his education on penalty of forfeiting his real estate, land and titles. He would teach Potter to reject his invitation to attend the country's premier school of magic.

When he entered the Wizengamot chamber he was rendered almost speechless.

The Wizengamot comprised sixty one seats, one was the Chief Warlock; four were those of the Minister of magic with three members of the Ministry who he could nominate, and one was the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Fifty of the seats had originally been for the clan chiefs of the various clans in existence when the Wizengamot had been founded; the final five seats were for Merlin and the four founders heirs who had originally set up the Wizengamot.

Each seat had one vote, however there was an additional scale of votes allocated to members with titles, these were cumulative and members with more than one title had their voting entitlements added together. The scale ran: Duke - fifteen votes; Marquis – ten votes; Earl – eight votes; Viscount – four votes; Baron – two votes; the title of Lord could be used to refer to any of them, provided they had a recognised title. There had never been a magical with the entitlement of the title Prince. As an example Sirius Black was the Earl of Blackmore eight votes and the Baron of Savoy two votes, plus the one for his seat eleven votes total. Over the years the Potter's had been very astute and it was only the Goblins, (and possibly the Potters) who knew exactly how many votes the Potter family had; however apart from anything else he knew that Potter had two Earldoms.

Originally it had required two hundred and fifty votes to form a quorum; over the years this figure had been reduce, currently it stood at seventy five and there were mutterings about this figure being reduced even further. Tradition had it that the members informed the recorder how many votes they could cast; this was to ensure that there were sufficient votes present to form a quorum. The recorder was forbidden, on penalty of their magic, from divulging how many votes any of the members could cast; Albus had always thought this to be a rather strange rule.

The final five seats had never, in anybody's memory, been occupied; they were set to the left, opposite the Ministry seating.

Today this area had a shimmering dome over it; Dumbledore stalked towards it whilst drawing his wand.

He was intercepted by Keri Jones, quite a senior female auror, "We have been asked to inform all members that it would be very unwise of them to cast any magic on or at the dome."

Dumbledore was annoyed, "How do I know that it is safe?"

She answered exactly as she had been briefed, "The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has asked The Department of Mysteries for their assistance in ensuring its safety, and we have been assured that this is the case; provided it is not interfered with. It is however a defensive shield, primarily for the defence of those inside it."

He was now even more annoyed, "The DMLE should call me to check such things."

Keri had been a student at Hogwarts, however she had never particularly liked or trusted Dumbledore and she smiled, softly, "According to the Wizengamot rules, it is the job of the Department of Mysteries to ensure the safety of such things. Additionally, there was a list of people who were expressly prohibited from checking the dome's magic, it comprised all of the people who, after the last demise of Voldemort, offered the imperious defence and had no veritaserum trial, after their having been accused of being Death Eater's. The only other name on that list was yours . . . sir."

Dumbledore's hubris had upped the ante from being annoyed to being livid, he lifted his wand and cast an analysis charm at the dome. As he did this the auror shouted, "Down!" as she dived to the floor, she was joined by several people who had come in after the Chief Warlock, and had been listening; none of them were hurt. Dumbledore however was not so lucky, his wand exploded and it severely damaged his right hand, also he also felt like he had been kicked in the groin by a giant.

Amelia Bones had been urgently summoned, ignoring Dumbledore she turned to the senior auror on the scene, "Auror Jones, What happened here?"

Keri Jones described exactly what had transpired and several members of the Wizengamot who had witnessed the events corroborated her story.

Dumbledore was still on the floor ranting, and the medic who had been seeing to his hand had to silence him whilst she explained to Amelia why he had to go to St Mungo's Hospital. Amelia agreed with her assessment, and detailed two aurors to accompany them, telling the aurors to ensure that the Royal Wizard was secure.

He was still far too self-absorbed to realised it, but Dumbledore had been set up; Amelia had hand-picked the mediwitch and aurors who were in the chamber when the old fool arrived, also those who had followed him in. The instigators didn't feel badly about what they had done because the whole scheme relied on the Headmaster reacting like the arrogant berk he usually proved to be . . . and he was kind enough to oblige them; if he had behaved rationally he would still be with them.

Amelia looked around and called, "Thaddeus Siskins, will you come here please."

A short balding wizard approached and asked how he might be of assistance; Amelia told him, "You are the Deputy Chief Warlock and as you have seen, the Chief Warlock has been incapacitated, you will have to take this session of the Wizengamot."

Siskins looked like he had wet himself; when he had been offered this job Dumbledore had made it very plain that if this situation ever occurred he was to cancel the session and reschedule it when the whiskered old fool was available, "We can postpone the session until the Chief Warlock is available."

"Siskins!" Mme Bones said with some asperity, "There are people at and coming to this Wizengamot session today, who have far better things to do with their time than chase around after our delinquent Chief Warlock. Besides which; you receive a stipend of twenty five Galleons a week for the title you hold, ergo it is your job to run this session. It is perfectly in order for the recorder and the Wizengamot Clerk to assist you."

At this moment the Minister of Magic arrived with his semi-tame pet toad, "What's that?" She screamed, drawing her wand.

Keri stepped towards her saying, "Don't do th . . ." Before she had finished, Delores Umbridge had fired a blasting curse at the dome . . . it came back with interest.

His Senior Undersecretary was dead and Fudge was livid, "Why didn't you get between her and that dome?" the Minister bellowed.

"Because I try not to get in-between a demented witch and her target; if she was not now passed her sell by date I would recommend that she try again, and you could try your recommended technique."

"Auror Jones! Go to my office immediately." Amelia had moved her auror out of Fudge's line of fire; she was very pleased with the way things had gone.

It did not take long for the elves to clear the body and the mess from the floor so Amelia suggested that they take their seats so the session could start.

Siskins was doing quite well with his opening remarks before he reached the part where Dumbledore's world had fallen apart, about two and a half years earlier; he asked if anybody had any preliminary business to bring before the meeting.

Amelia made her opening move, "The Minister's office has sent a summons to the Lord Potter telling him that he has to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his education on penalty of forfeiting his real estate, land and titles. It is signed by Delores Umbridge on behalf of the Minister of Magic.

"I ask the Minister . . . why was this sent?"

Fudge was in a panic; however his Senior Undersecretary was dead, and the original instigator, Dumbledore, had been carted off to St Mungo's ranting in a manner that suggested that it would be a while before he managed to get out . . . best option . . . deny and lie . . . "I have no idea."

She wasn't born yesterday, and as this morning's situation had developed Amelia had anticipated that her question would produce an answer like this; she sent in a probe, "No idea at all?"

The Minister breathed a sigh of relief, "Not really, however most of us are aware that Dumbledore seems to have an unhealthy obsession with Lord Potter, just why he has never even hinted at, whilst in my company, and we have all seen that Mme Umbridge could act rashly at times.

"I would like to add that the British public would like to see Harry Potter attending Hogwarts."

Harry had stood and moved to the front of their enclosure, "Is Madame Griselda Marchbanks with us this morning?"

A very old lady stood and Harry beckoned for an auror to come to him, he passed the auror the folder he had been holding and asked him to take it to the Head of Magical Education . . . he asked, "Madame Marchbanks would you please review the contents of the folder and inform the Wizengamot of your observations."

It took the Head of Magical Education the best part of five minutes to assess the folder's information and come to a conclusion; she stood back up and said, "I am sorry to have taken so long but at first I did not believe what I was reading; so I checked and found all of the documents to be authentic, so I have to ask what subjects you were expecting him to teach?"

There was a babble of noise, the majority of people in the room were confused including the Minister, so he asked, "I believe that most of us are at a loss to understand precisely what you mean, and so could you please explain your last statement?"

Standing again Griselda answered, "The folder is from 'Y Crochendy Hud Ysgol' which has been translated for us, The Pottery Magic School. It contains Owl and NEWT certificates for nine students, eight of them are girls and the other is a boy, their current calendar ages are ten and eleven years old. I will make a summary and read out a representative sample.

"Ginevra Weasley, age ten, pure blood witch; ten OWLS six are O's, also ten NEWTS seven are O's.

"Luna Lovegood, age ten, another pure blood witch; twelve OWLS seven are O's, also twelve NEWTS nine are O's.

"Daphne Greengrass, age eleven, full blood witch; twelve OWLS eleven are O's, also twelve NEWTS ten are O's; she has Honours in Technomancy.

"Honours mean that the student has the highest score in the world the year they took the examination; Hogwarts has not had an honours student since Lilly Potter, Harry Potter's mother, scored Honours in her Potions NEWT more than fifteen years ago.

"Hermione Granger, she is age eleven, and she is a first generation witch; she scored fifteen OWLS all at O, she also scored fifteen NEWTS once again all at O. She obtained Honours in Runes, Arithmancy and Charms; Hogwarts has never in its history had a triple Honours student.

"I don't think that I would get out of here alive if I didn't read out one more.

"Harry Potter, I think that we all know that he is aged eleven, also we know that he is a half-blood wizard; he also managed fifteen OWLS all at O and fifteen NEWTS again all at O. He scored Honours in Defence, Curse Breaking, Warding and Transfiguration.

"All of the nine students passed all of the subjects they took, and no two of them took all of the same subjects. Also, although I have not checked completely through it, there are muggle G.C.E. O and A level pass results for all of them; I think that it would be fair to say that if they bothered to take it, they would all find their Non Magical Studies NEWT extremely easy.

"So I will ask again, what subjects would you like any of them to teach?" She sat back down, smiling.

The room was totally silent.

**-x-**

Parvati and Hannah were whispering in a corner and giggling, looking up the very pretty young Indian girl asked, "So Sirius, do you think that they will try to dream up some other way to try to get us into Hoggy Warty?" It didn't show often but she was still a young girl and was giggling again.

The setting sun was in his eyes as they were sitting on the veranda of what had become their home, he answered, "I am still not sure that you should have let them know how they could contact us, and whatever they offer you, you can easily counter. If they start offering things that start to look reasonable you could ask for things that would be difficult for them . . . you could ask for Malfoy senior to stand trial under veritaserum, to prove he was never a Death Eater. Of course they will question this and you can say that you don't want to go to Hogwarts if Malfoy junior has been pre-programmed by someone who most people believe to be one of Voldemort's major supporters.

"Susan's aunt would be dancing for joy if she could get Veritaserum into Malfoy, and she would have him spilling the name of every Death Eater, all of the Voldemort supporters and his financial backers.

"I shouldn't really be surprised, but Hermione was right three years ago when she stopped us and the Goblins telling the world that despite what anyone else might say Voldemort was completely finished; if it is played properly the pure blood supremacy movement can be totally eradicated."

**-x-**

Fudge had been coerced into offering up Lucius Malfoy as bait to attract Harry Potter into Hogwarts; later it had been obvious that the Minister had actually believed Malfoy's lies, as in his protestations of innocence; so it hadn't just been the bribes. Y Potters, as they now called themselves, had helped plan the demise of the blood bigots; Fudge had told Amelia when he was going to put Lucius Malfoy in the hot seat. As soon as she knew she had arranged with the Goblins to restrict access to all suspect death eater vaults from the evening before the Malfoy's outing in the Wizengamot.

Remus and Sirius had worked with Luna and Ginny to create a communication link between The Director of Magical Law Enforcement and the Director of Gringotts Bank. The device was runic driven, and it took the form of a golden chain around Amelia's neck and a speaking stone on Ragnok's desk; Luna had thought that the talking stone was cute.

As Malfoy named names the Goblins closed all of their vaults, and Amelia issued arrest warrants; concurrently PBLC foreclosed any outstanding loans against them. PBLC was the Potter Black Loan Company, it had absorbed all of the other wizarding loan companies, thus making it the largest such company in the British magical world.

Without significant financial backing it is all but impossible to mount a meaningful resistance against the authorities.

**-x-**

At dinner with the nine three days later, Amelia tentatively asked, "Azkaban is bursting at the seams and our holding cells are groaning; what are we supposed to do?"

Thinking that it was best she did it, her niece Susan answer was not in the least tentative, "You are not going to like the proper answer, although you probably already know it.

"It is generally agreed that the greatest military strategist who ever lived was the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu; he said; _you never leave a live enemy behind you_; you should send all of those you have finished questioning, through the Veil of Death. The rest of the guilty should follow them when you have finished questioning them. It is not meant to be nice, it is simply efficient; it is rather obvious that you are talking about Death Eaters and all Death Eaters are cold blooded murderers, it is how they get their mark; if they ever get out they will begin killing innocents again.

"These people chose to become what they became, the protean charm Voldemort used to mark them can only be taken by them voluntarily, it could not be forced on them.

"Forgiveness is a personal thing, and provided it is distributed fairly, to those who repent and genuinely regret what they have done; it is an admirable quality for a school teacher; however, it should only be offered to those who truly repent. It is not something that can be offered by the State; Dumbledore nearly managed to lose the last war because he never understood this; he never understood the difference between killing and murder; murder is wrong; however the state killing terrorists who are murdering their subjects is justifiable. Please be careful aunty, we all love you and we don't want anything to happen to you; the families of some of the people you will have left behind are nearly as bad as those you will be executing."

Susan was now crying and she was being comforted by Hannah and Luna.

Harry tried to help, "We all know that what Susan has said is correct; what was never stated in the Wizengamot is that apart from anything else, we all have Masteries in Defence; I don't think that I would be overstepping the mark if I said that if you need us, we will all help you as much as we can."

All of the girls were nodding their agreement with Harry's statement of intent.

**-x-**

Those scheduled for execution included Cornelius Fudge and all of his cronies, and this left an opening for those remaining, of the Dumbledore faction, to attempt the resurrection of the deluded old fool. As Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia had been given the task of rebuilding the magical government; basically from scratch. She declared herself open to allowing Dumbledore to explain his policies before an open secession of the Wizengamot; whilst she was to be allowed to question him, using veritaserum if necessary; he would not be permitted to avoid the question's he was being asked.

Amelia drew the whiskered old fool into a discussion of his oft quoted greater good; after applying sufficient truth serum the truth and the facts were, to the horror of almost everyone, eventually revealed.

It had originally been planned when, at the age of twelve, along with his very good friend Gellert Grindelwald, they devised their policy of the greater good; their only difference in opinion was in the method of its implementation. The policy envisaged the pure blood elite ruling over the Magical World and the Magical World ruling over all of the muggles; Dumbledore wished to achieve this through a policy of subversion; Gellert preferred violence, because it was quicker.

Gellert's idea was to back some megalomaniac Muggle tyrant who would conquer and unify the muggles; in this process millions of muggles would probably die . . . so what? Ultimately his cabal of wizards would overthrow the tyrant taking over the leadership of his organization. Subsequently they would insert pure blood wizards into controlling positions in the various departments required to control the vast muggle population.

Towards the end of the session Amelia was elected Minister of Magic, and Dumbledore was sent back to hospital; the demise of their leader allowed the new minister to gradually replace all of his former supporters who were in positions of authority.

The executions of the convicted death eaters followed within days.

**-x-**

"Did you see the robes and that jewellery that Ginny was wearing; it must have cost a bloody fortune?" Pop, his mother had smacked Ron Weasley across the back of the head for swearing.

"No more than two or three years of Dad's salary." Percy opined; they had all been at a winter solstice ball held at Green-acres the Greengrass family home.

"I still don't understand why you wouldn't let me go with Ginny?" Ron was in a snit.

"Because you couldn't read, you only just managed to pass your pre Hogwarts reading test two years later, and thank goodness they don't test writing, I doubt that you would pass now.

"Percy, I know that you are a prefect and have other things to do, but you must find time to regularly help your brother." Molly had had enough.

"Honest I have tried mum but as soon as my back is turned he disappears off somewhere and hides; or he is flying a broom." The twins were nodding their agreement with Percy's explanation.

"I spoke about him with the Headmistress tonight; she said that he will be banned from the Quidditch pitch until his school work is up to scratch. She also suggested that you give him detention with her until he pulls his finger out, you or she can tutor him there, and make sure that his homework is done." Molly was smirking, Percy was looking resigned and Ron was looking horrified.

**-x-**

It had taken the best part of four years for the violent reaction to the execution of over five hundred convicted death eaters to die out. The first year and a half had been the worst; several times disenfranchised groups of pure blood fanatics had success by attacking small groups of aurors.

Groups of thirty plus rebels, ambushing and winning against five or six aurors, does not mean that the fighting ability of the rebels is necessarily that good. Gradually growing bolder due to their occasional success, the rebels all banded together and over one hundred and fifty of them waylaid the Minister of Magic and her party of twenty five aurors.

Within seconds of the first spell being fired nine teenagers arrived, they immediately put up one of their reflecting shields, and it was virtually all over; one hundred and fifty seven terrorists dead and one auror slightly injured.

Being pure blood as an ideology was effectively over, and logic ruled.

**-x-**

"What are we going to do about us?" Daphne asked; they were all about fifteen calendar years old, although with time compression they were all nearer forty five.

He was in his bedroom sitting in a big armchair, and the eight girls sat on sofas and in other chairs.

It was an unexpected question with no context, so Harry asked, "Would that be you and me 'us', or all of 'us' as a unit 'us'?"

Hermione tried to fill in some context, "The so called adults are down stairs now and we believe they are talking about marriage offers they have received for their daughters . . . even my mum and dad have had some. We have all reached the age when boys and girls start thinking about each other . . ."

Harry was looking bemused, so Luna interrupted, "Sex Harry . . . sex, and marriage, and babies, and . . . and things."

"Thank you Luna for helping me out of a hole I was digging myself into." Hermione smiled.

Harry looked serious, "For years I have thought that we would always be together, and I am very happy with that; but I have been revising all of these books we all went through years ago, with Sirius, and I have realised that it is not my decision to make. I have the means to marry you all legally, even in England, and what we own here is larger than Luxembourg; and the country we are in has no rules that would prohibit my marrying you all . . . what I am saying is that whatever we decide to do is legal.

"It is a decision we must each make for ourselves; I will be happy if any or all of you decide to stay for the long haul; but as I just said you each must make your own decision."

Hermione stood and walked over, plonking herself on his lap, she inexpertly kissed him quite seriously, and said, "I'm with you for the long haul," and she kissed him again.

The procedure initiated by Hermione was repeated by all of the other girls before Susan said, "We need more practice at that . . . kissing . . . a lot more . . . or more than that even."

Ginny smirked, "I think that we should go down stairs and join the discussion, if we leave that lot alone for too long who knows what trouble they will get themselves into."

There was a fair bit of giggling as they left Harry's room and went down stairs.

**-x-**

The very loud argument seemed to switch off as the nine entered the conservatory; in the room were all of their current parents or guardians.

Ginny was smirking, the nine had a pretty good idea what had caused the ruckus and Ginny had volunteered to start their response off, "What's the problem?"

Y Potters knew what had created the problem; their calendar age was fifteen, and they all looked about eighteen and very fit; intellectually they were closer to forty five and the people of their calendar age appeared to them to be children.

The adults all started talking at once and all that came out was babble; she shouted, "One at the time please; although it would be better if you picked one person to explain your problem; to maybe curtail some more arguments, I would suggest that it should be the current British Minister of Magic."

Amelia looked at her compatriots and then said, "Excluding the Grangers, we have all received letters asking us if the old tradition of betrothals is still in operation, and basically if it isn't what is going to replace it; as you heard, we didn't really reach a conclusion. I suppose that we should ask you all what you think of it. I will add that we have all, including the Grangers, received tentative offers for your hands in marriage."

Ginny again answered, "Most of the old system as it stood should never return; selling a possible son or more usually a daughter before they are even born is totally repugnant, and the reasons for it are worse. Your society has become insular; muggle children have birthday parties from before they start school at five until they no longer want to have them.

"Wizards bundle their previously isolated eleven year old children off to boarding school; where three-quarter of them are stuck in another one of the Houses, without so much as a by your leave, and they are then left to get on with it; they are not going to meet potential mates this way.

"Is this deliberate on the part of the pure blood fathers, so they will marry whoever they are told to?

"Changing your society is only just starting; changes have to be made so you don't revert back to the old ways; if you are not careful they will quickly sneak in through the back door. We have written a long article for all of the wizarding press, it outlines what we have been saying; children do not ask to be born and when they are they become your responsibility to nurture and look after; they are not your property. None of us are chattels to be auctioned off to the highest bidder to fill the parent's bank account; or to soften some otherwise questionable business deal."

Harry decided that it was time for his intervention, "As most of you are probably aware, my family is relatively very old, and that we have two Earldoms and seven Baronies a total of twenty seven votes in the Wizengamot.

"Well we have been searching through records in the older Potter houses and vaults; we also worked in tandem with Gringotts. We have found that I hold eleven Dukedoms these were earned between six hundred ad to one thousand ad, and were granted, for services rendered by the various Kings of Mercia. Mercia seemed to be generally expansionist, and the Potters ran an early magical school in Mid-Wales, it basically produced warrior knights; a group of these Knights was at the forefront of Mercia's expansion. All of the Dukedoms were current at the founding of the Wizengamot, and all were signatories to the original charter; in my vault I still have all eleven Ducal Signets.

"All of these young ladies have suggested that they would like to stay with me permanently; if they do, they will all be Duchess's, and I will pay a stipend of twenty thousand Galleons to their families. Traditionally the stipend was ten thousand Galleons because if your daughter suddenly became a Duchess then your family would likely move into a higher social circle; I have increased the stipend to cover inflation.

"The Dukedoms are Gododdin; Kyle; Rheged; Bernicia; Elmet; Deira; Magonsaete; Burford; Tamworth; Degannwy and Rhuddian. Being honest I had never heard of any of these places; I don't even know if any of them still exist; that however is irrelevant."

Dan asked, "How on earth will you decide who will have which title?"

Harry smiled and said, "I won't, I do not wish to die an early death."

"So just who's going to be doing the deciding then . . . Potter?" Daphne asked with some asperity.

Harry smiled at her, "You will . . ." he could see the mounting explosions . . . "I figured that you would all be called something like, Duchess Ginny 'one of those weird names' Potter; so people will forget the weird name and call her, Duchess Ginny Potter. If that is going to be the case anyway I will let you all pick which one of the weird names you want . . . and while the eight of you decide I will ride my quad on the beach.

"Oh, and Lord Greengrass, from something Daphne has said, I would like to ask your permission to ask your daughter Astoria, if she would like to join us here.

"According to Amelia this whole thing was started off by Higher Magic; so to finish it I was thinking that I should go with Y Potters and whoever else has a vote in the Wizengamot, and claim my eleven Dukedoms . . . it should be quite entertaining."

**-x-**

And they all lived happily ever after . . . although the British magical world was never the same again.

**The End**

**Note 3 -** Once again loose ends all over the place . . . he who cares should tie them all up.


End file.
